understanding contemporary india

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EXCERPTED FROM

Understanding Contemporary India

THIRD EDITION

edited byNeil DeVotta and Sumit GangulyCopyright © 2021

ISBN: 978-1-62637-940-4 pb

vii

Contents

List of Illustrations xiPreface xv

1 Introducing India Neil DeVotta 1Diverse India 3Democratic Vibrancy and Backsliding 13Hindutva 15The Chapters Ahead 19

2 A Geographic Preface Douglas Hill 23The Physical Geography of India 25Geographies of a Changing Environment 32The Geographies of Uneven Human Development 37The Urban Geographies of India’s Future 46Conclusion 50

3 The Historical Context Benjamin B. Cohen 53The Indus Valley, 2500–1500 B.C.E. 54The Vedic Era, 1500–500 B.C.E. 56The Buddhist Period, 500 B.C.E.–700 C.E. 58The Gupta Empire, 320–550 C.E. 61The Southern Dynasties 63Islam in South Asia, 700–1206 65The Delhi Sultanate, 1206–1526 67

The Mughals, 1526–1707 69European Arrivals, 1498–1600 76Company Ascendancy, 1757–1857 78The Raj, Nationalists, and Independence, 1858–1947 83

4 The Political System Eswaran Sridharan 91India’s Social Diversity 92The Constitution and the Basics of the Political System 95India’s Federalism 96Political Parties and the Evolution of the Party System 97Underlying Drivers of Party System Evolution 99Leadership: Key Leaders and Their Impact 101Party Structure and Functioning 110Conclusion: The Stability of India’s Unity

and Democracy 112

5 Economies and DevelopmentRahul Mukherji and Seyed Hossein Zarhani 117Gradual Evolution of Policy Ideas 120Economic Growth and Industrialization 121Citizen Well-Being 133The Predicament of Covid-19 139Conclusion 140

6 International Relations Sumit Ganguly 143The Challenge to Nonalignment 145The End of the Cold War 148Institutional and Societal Factors in

the Policymaking Process 154The Role of Parliament, the Cabinet, and

Other Institutions 155The Mass Media and Other Institutions 156The Future of India’s Foreign Policy 158

7 The Politics of Caste Christophe Jaffrelot 161From the Caste System to Caste-Based Competition 163Reservations in the Political Domain 167What Party for the Scheduled Castes? 169The Lower Castes Take Power 169

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The BSP’s Rise to Power: Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj 171

Voting One’s Caste While Casting One’s Vote 178Caste and Politics in the Age of Hindutva 180Conclusion 183

8 Religion Chad M. Bauman and Ainslie T. Embree 185Toward a Definition of Religion 185Religious Demographics 186India’s Four Major Indigenous Religions:

Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism 186Two Nonindigenous Indian Religions:

Islam and Christianity 197Religions in Interaction and Reinterpretation 202Communal Tensions and Secularism:

The Politicization of Religion 208Challenging Secularism 213Conclusion 220

9 The Status of Women Lisa Trivedi 221Thinking About “Indian Women” 224Women in Colonial India 225Indian Women and the “Nation”:

From Objects of Reform to Subjects 227Women and the Franchise 228Women and the Republic of India 229Civil Rights 230Panchayats and Reservation for Women 238Education 239Employment 241The Nirbhaya Rape Case, 2012 242Conclusion 247

10 Population, Urbanization, and Environmental Challenges Kelly D. Alley 251Environmental Regulations and

the Activist Judiciary 252Peri-Urban Growth and Intensification of

the Urban Cores 257

Contents ix

Stressed Water Resources 259Climate Change, Floods, and Drought 263Energy and Pollution 266Renewable Energy 267Pollution and Public Health 270Conclusion 272

11 Looking Ahead Neil DeVotta 275Economic Challenges 276Illiberalism amid Rising Authoritarianism 278Malgovernance amid Greater Unity 279Security and Foreign Relations 281Whither Rising India? 283

Glossary 285References 293The Contributors 317Index 319About the Book 335

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1

Every time India holds a general election, it turns out tobe the largest-ever exercise in democracy. Mind-boggling electoral sta-tistics have been the norm in India, beginning with the country’s veryfirst general election of October 1951 to February 1952 (the logisticalchallenges involved in conducting general elections in India mandatethat they be held in stages, with different regions going to the polls atdifferent times, although elections today last around a month). That firstgeneral election saw 176 million Indians, of which 85 percent were illit-erate, qualifying to vote at 224,000 polling booths presided over by56,000 election offices, 280,000 assistants, and 224,000 policemen(Guha 2007b: 133–134).

When the country held its seventeenth general elections in Apriland May 2019, another record was shattered. This time nearly 900 mil-lion Indians qualified to vote, of which 15 million were first-time vot-ers. The election required the services of around 12 million officials atover 1 million polling booths. As per Indian law, voters should not haveto travel more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) to cast their vote. Electionofficials, therefore, had to visit the most remote parts of the country socitizens could exercise their franchise. In Ladakh, officials were equippedwith oxygen tanks to get to twelve voters living at an altitude of over14,000 feet, while others waded through crocodile-infested swamps inthe Andaman and Nicobar Islands to reach voters. A polling booth waseven set up in the Gir Forest National Park so just one person, a Hindupriest, could cast his vote (Quraishi 2019). Ultimately, over 600 millionpeople cast votes, with turnout exceeding 67 percent. High turnout is a

1Introducing India

Neil DeVotta

feature of eletions held in South Asia, and India clearly contributes tothis standard.

India’s unique democracy upends arguments made by scholarsabout prerequisites for ensuring a successful democracy. For instance, itis generally true that the more educated and economically better-offpeople are, the more likely they are to vote. In India, however, the lesseducated and poor vote in greater numbers (often after standing inqueues for hours) than those who are better educated and economicallywell-off. Furthermore, in Western countries especially, minorities tendto vote in lower numbers. In India, on the contrary, minorities vote inhigher numbers. In the most recent election, not only did the poor, lowcastes, and minorities vote in large numbers, but they (with the excep-tion of Muslims) also voted in higher numbers to reelect Narendra Modiand his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a second con-secutive term (Suri 2019; Chhibber and Verma 2019).

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Figure 1.1 Political Map of South Asia

Punjab

HimachalPradesh

Haryana

UttarPradesh

Rajasthan

MadhyaPradesh

Gujarat

Maharashtra

Bihar

Orissa

AndhraPradesh

KarnatakaGoa

TamilNadu

Kerala

West Bengal

Sikkim

Assam

Meghalaya

Arunachal Pradesh

Nagaland

Manipur

Mizoram

Tripura

Chhattisgarh

Jharkhand

Kashmir is disputed territory

Ahmadabad Calcutta

Hyderabad

Madras

Srinagar

Bangalore

Mumbai(Bombay)

Nagpur

Sholapur

Agra

Patna

Mathura

AllahabadVaranasi

Hardwar

Pune

Mysore

New Delhi

Kathmandu

Islamabad

Colombo

Dhaka

Thimphu

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

INDIA

CHINA

MYANMAR(BURMA)

NEPAL

BHUTAN

SRI LANKA

BANGLADESH

Kashmir

Uttaranchal

Brahmaputra

Ganges

Ganges

Ganges

Indu

s

Indu

s

Indus

Andaman Sea

A r a b i a n S e a

B a y

o f

B e n g a l

La

cc

ad

iv

e

Se

a

I n d i a n O c e a n

Map 2.1South Asia

LoC

LoC Line of Control

Democracies, more than any other form of government, are better atreforming and adapting. This process, however, is rarely neat, and Indiaproves the point. Parties and politicians contest to win; so, absent strongrules, they will resort to electoral shenanigans to capture and stay inpower. Thus, by one estimate, over 120 million Indians, mainly Mus-lims and women, were denied the chance to vote in the 2019 parliamen-tary elections because their names, for whatever reason, did not appearon voting lists (Shankar 2019). Ultimately, there are no perfect democ-racies in the world, and India needs to shed some troubling communalfeatures in order to prevent democratic backsliding.

Thus far, however, India’s democratic structure has remained suffi-ciently robust that various Indian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)and citizens groups utilize the country’s constitution and institutions(especially the courts) when trying to confront injustices committedagainst the most marginalized citizens—including the lower castes,women, and children. By some accounts these civil society organizationsnumber over 500,000, and anyone spending sufficient time in rural andurban India can speak to their valiant efforts.

This triumph of democracy, however, represents a paradox, in thatthe deepening of democracy has been accompanied by political frag-mentation and increased malgovernance (Sharma 2010: 68). SinceNarendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, communalismrooted in Islamophobia and authoritarianism has contributed to this mal-governance (DeVotta 2019). But this is merely one paradox in a countrythat is in many ways a paradox. For India is both a young state and oneof the world’s oldest civilizations; it is a potential superpower, yet morethan 300 million of its citizens live in abject poverty; it is the proudland of the peaceful Mohandas Gandhi, yet it brandishes nuclearweapons and hosts one of the world’s largest militaries; its rivers arerevered for embodying deities, yet are among the world’s most pollutedwaterways; its infrastructure in many areas is abysmal, yet its informa-tion technology workers, engineers, scientists, and academics are indemand the world over; and it is a country led by powerful women atvarious ranks, yet its women are among the most marginalized in theworld. The chapters in this volume confront such paradoxes in seekingto explain contemporary India.

Diverse IndiaIndia’s ability to combine relatively free and fair elections with diver-sity is what many find commendable. It is with good reason that Robert

Introducing India 3

Blackwill, upon completing his tenure as US ambassador to India in 2003,noted that “India is a pluralist society that creates magic with democ-racy, rule of law and individual freedom, community relations anddiversity. . . . I wouldn’t mind being born ten times to rediscover India”(Phadnis 2003).

Indeed, one would need to be born at least ten times to discoverIndia. This is why there are no “experts” on India. Notwithstanding theplethora of knowledgeable commentators on specific subjects pertainingto India, only those who are arrogant or ignorant dare claim to be anexpert on this maddeningly diverse country comprising 325 functioninglanguages (including twenty-two official languages), hundreds of dialects,twenty-five scripts, six major religions—Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism,Buddhism, Christianity, and Jainism—4,500 caste groups, hundreds oftribal groups, and their resulting traditions and cultures encompassed intwenty-eight states and nine territories (see Table 1.1).

India’s diversity ranks among the country’s greatest strengths. Whatwe now call Hinduism has played a huge role in fostering this diversity.The term Hinduism is of recent origin and was popularized by the Britishin the nineteenth century as they sought to understand the varied religioustraditions among India’s Hindus (Hawley 1991). Given their Christianbackground, the British were nonplussed when confronted with the dif-ferent “Hinduisms” in India that embraced numerous gods, rituals, andtraditions, all of which had evolved over 4,000 years.

Unlike in the monotheistic (and most other) religions, Hindus donot have an official canon, a stated doctrine, an overarching leader, oran institution. In short, one could be a monotheist, a polytheist, or anatheist (who may merely devote her- or himself to the study of theUpanishads—ancient, abstruse philosophical texts—yet never visit atemple) and still be considered a good Hindu. Unlike the monotheistictexts that mandate fundamental beliefs, the Hindu texts promote variedbeliefs and practices and come across as contradictory.

As US scholar Wendy Doniger (2009: 688) has noted, one could usethese texts and argue for almost any position in contemporary India:that Hindus have been vegetarians, and that they have not; that Hindusand Muslims have gotten along well together, and that they have not;that Hindus have objected to suttee (or sati, whereby widows are burnedon their husband’s funeral pyres), and that they have not; that Hindushave renounced the material world, and that they have embraced it; thatHindus have oppressed women and lower castes, and that they havefought for their equality. One can see why the British, who possessed apredilection for categorizing and cataloging the territories and peoplesthey conquered, got confused.

4 Neil DeVotta

India’s diversity partly stems from the country not being a single polit-ical entity until recently. For while one can speak of an Indian civilization,India’s present territorial borders represent a historical accident. BritishIndia consisted of nearly 600 principalities, and it was British ambitionsand malpractice that gave the country its current boundaries. Britain’sbiggest mistake may have been to clumsily partition the subcontinent in

Introducing India 5

Table 1.1 India’s States and Territories

State Year Created Major Languages

Andhra Pradesh 1956 Telugu and UrduArunachal Pradesh 1987 English, Miji, HonpaAssam 1947 Assamese and BodoBihar 1950 Hindi and BhojpuriChhattisgarh 2000 HindiGoa 1987 Marathi and KonkaniGujarat 1960 GujaratiHaryana 1966 HindiHimachal Pradesh 1971 Hindi and PahariJharkhand 2000 HindiKarnataka 1956 KannadaKerala 1956 MalayalamMadhya Pradesh 1956 HindiMaharashtra 1960 MarathiManipur 1972 MeiteilonMeghalaya 1972 English, Garo, KhasiMizoram 1987 English and MizoNagaland 1963 EnglishOrissa 1949 OriyaPunjab 1956 PunjabiRajasthan 1956 Hindi and RajastaniSikkim 1975 Nepali, Bhutia, Limbu, LepchaTamil Nadu 1956 Tamil Telangana 2014 Telugu, UrduTripura 1972 Bengali, Kokborok, ManipuriUttar Pradesh 1947 Hindi and UrduUttarakhand 2000 Hindi, Kumaoni, GarhwaliWest Bengal 1960 BengaliTerritoriesAndaman and 2001 Nicobarese, English, Bengali, Nicobar Islands Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam

Chandigarh 1953 Hindi and PunjabiDadra and Nagar Haveli 1961 Marathi and GujaratiDaman and Diu 1987 Marathi and GujaratiDelhi 1947 Hindi, Urdu, English, PunjabiLakshadweep 1956 MalayalamPondicherry 1963 Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, FrenchJammu and Kashmira 2019 Kashmiri, Urdu, Dogri, PahariLadakh 2019 Ladakhi

Note: a. Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh, operated as a state from 1947 to 2019,when it became two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

August 1947, which led to hundreds of thousands being killed and an esti-mated 15 million people displaced, as it created Pakistan and, inadver-tently, Bangladesh (Talbot and Singh 2009: 2). Postindependence India’schallenge has been to try to get the variegated peoples who ended upwithin its borders to embrace and celebrate a common Indian identity evenwhile nurturing their distinct cultures and traditions. This is a continuouschallenge, and it is manifested in the periodic communal violence (espe-cially between Hindus and Muslims) and secessionist violence the Indianstate has experienced since independence.

Muslim elites like Mohammed Ali Jinnah had justified Partition bypromoting a “two nation” theory claiming that Hindus and Muslimswere different nations no matter how they were evaluated, and that thesubcontinent’s Muslims therefore qualified to have their own country.This was the basis for creating Pakistan. Indian elites like JawaharlalNehru were determined not to position their country as a Hindu entity inopposition to “Muslim Pakistan” and staunchly promoted India as astate in which all religious groups could live amicably. Notwithstandingthe grotesque violence that accompanied Partition, Gandhi and Nehruencouraged Muslims to make the country their home; and Gandhi’scampaigns on behalf of Muslims, his assassination in January 1948 atthe hands of a Hindu extremist, and the reflection this promoted amongboth Hindus and Muslims influenced many among the latter to stay onin India (Husain 1965: 134).

Given especially the communal violence that led to Partition, it isunderstandable why some Hindus felt their religious community oughtto dominate the state’s affairs. But it was the pluralist and secularapproach that Gandhi, Nehru, and others within the Congress Partychampioned that initially held sway.

The idea of secularism is influenced by Europe’s Protestant Refor-mation. In the United States it led to the separation of church and stategiven the Founding Fathers’ aversion to any established state religion.But throughout South Asia’s history, princely rulers had functioned aspatrons of religions; so defining secularism in the newly independentIndia became problematic. Nehru felt that the irrational influences ofreligion would vitiate as society developed; India should therefore notprivilege religious identities but instead emphasize individual rightsrooted in public law. Gandhi, on the other hand, felt all religions weretrue and valid and could be the basis for sustaining communities(Rudolph 1987: 747). Given the contradictions associated with secular-ism in an Indian context, the constitution, which took effect in January1950, avoided branding the state as secular. That took place in 1976,

6 Neil DeVotta

when a government under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi introduced theforty-second amendment to the constitution. Yet the state modern India’sfounding fathers sought to create was undergirded by a secular ethos.

This was evidenced by how India sought to accommodate religiousminorities and groups who were discriminated against for centuriesbased on caste and tribal identities. Thus Muslims and Christians wereallowed to create and oversee educational institutions. IndependentIndia also decided not to institute a uniform civil code, which meantthat Muslims could utilize their own law when dealing with issues ofmarriage, divorce, and inheritance.

The Reservation SystemThe reservation (or quota) system put in place so Dalits (formerly calledUntouchables), Tribals, and Other Backward Classes could overcomediscrimination and secure employment represents a significant instanceof accommodation on the part of the Indian state. Whatever reasonsmay have justified the creation of the caste system, it morphed over theages into an institution that oppressed and denigrated millions of Indi-ans. The periodic violence ranging from rape and murder associatedwith caste represents a major blemish on Indian society. Dalits continueto face the brunt of this oppression.

Forced into lives of servitude, drudgery, and humiliation, it is onlyin postindependence India that many Dalit communities have been ableto assert themselves, and the main reason for their being able to do so isthe right to vote. Chapter 7 describes the caste and reservation systems,but what bears repeating is that the rise of the Dalits and lower castes inIndia represents a social revolution. The reservation system put in placeover the years now ensures that 22.5 percent of all central governmentjobs and university placements are set aside for Dalits and Tribals. Sim-ilarly, 27 percent of all government jobs are placements in government-run universities reserved for caste groups that fall under the OtherBackward Classes category.

In January 2019, partly as a sop to its higher-caste base, the rulingBharatiya Janata Party engineered the 104th amendment to the Indianconstitution and thereby ensured a 10 percent quota for so-called econom-ically weaker sections (EWS) of society. As a result, those who are notfrom Dalit, Tribal, or Other Backward Classes families and making lessthan 800,000 rupees (around $11,000) per year qualify to compete forjobs and educational placement through this EWS quota. The quota willlikely weaken opposition among the upper castes toward the reservationsystem (as they too now benefit from it), but it also muddies the criteria

Introducing India 7

for reservation since quotas have hitherto been justified based on cen-turies-long caste oppression, not economic hardship. This new quota wasestablished despite the Supreme Court having ruled that total reservationsin India should not exceed 50 percent. Those who consider the 50 percentreservation cap to now be a basic structure of the constitution havebrought cases against the new quota, although the apex court has refusedto issue any stay orders. So the quota is being implemented in most cen-tral universities and other government establishments.

India also has quotas in place for Dalits and Tribals in parliament.Currently, out of the 543 seats in parliament’s lower house, 84 arereserved for Dalits and 47 for Tribals. Dalits and Tribals also have seatsreserved for them in the respective state legislatures. The CongressParty–led governments have even considered imposing job quotas onthe private sector to increase Dalit and low-caste representation, buthave been forced to back off.

Beginning in 1952, two representatives from the Anglo-Indian com-munity (those of European and Indian ancestry) were nominated toserve in parliament (as the community is relatively small and too scat-tered to compete for any seats). But the 104th amendment to the Indianconstitution, passed in January 2020, did away with this reservation atboth the national and state legislature levels.

While the number of women winning elections to the Lok Sabha(lower house) of parliament has been inching up—45 women wereelected in 2004, 58 were elected in 2009, 66 in 2014, and 78 in 2019—a movement to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill, which would setaside 33 percent of seats in the lower house, state legislatures, and localgovernments for women, is yet to become a reality.

Women and Panchayati RajIndian women, however, do enjoy reservation at the local governmentlevels. Panchayats are the five-member local governing bodies in India’sfederal system. Comprising three levels (gram panchayats, block pan-chayats, and district panchayats), there are over 250,000 entities at thelowest (gram panchayat) level. Not only does the Indian constitutionreserve positions for Dalits and Tribals (in line with their populationwithin the panchayat), it also reserves one-third of the seats for women.Consequently, at present over a million women get elected to thesecouncils every five years. In 2009 the Congress Party–led Union Cabi-net recommended that reservation for women in panchayati institutionsbe increased to 50 percent. Some states had already taken the lead inthis regard, and at present over half of India’s states reserve 50 percent

8 Neil DeVotta

of seats for women in panchayati institutions. The evidence of whethersuch decentralization has improved governance is mixed (Mullen 2013:78), but the fact remains that there is no electoral exercise of this mag-nitude designed to empower women anywhere else in the world.

Dealing with RegionsThe political process in India typically unfolds amid great tumult, andstudents of India cannot be blamed for thinking that Indian elites arebetter at ruling than governing. One can rule by diktat, but governancerequires compromise and tact. Nehru, who was instinctively drawntoward accommodation as opposed to confrontation, stands out withregard to the latter, and this is evident in how he dealt with regionalleaders and their various demands. It is especially evident in his instruc-tions to the Indian army regarding how to deal with the Naga tribeseven after Naga rebels had ambushed homes, burnt houses, “lootedshops . . . kidnapped teachers . . . raided railway stations and snipedtrains” (Elwin 1961: 60).

You must remember that all the people of the area in which you are operatingare fellow-Indians. They may have a different religion, they may pursue a dif-ferent way of life, but they are Indians, and the very fact that they are differ-ent and yet part of India is a reflection of India’s greatness. Some of thesepeople are misguided and have taken to arms against their own people, and aredisrupting the peace of this area. You are to protect the mass of the peoplefrom these disruptive elements. You are not there to fight the people in thearea, but to protect them. You are fighting only those who threaten the peopleand who are a danger to the lives and properties of the people. You must, there-fore, do everything possible to win their confidence and respect and to helpthem feel that they belong to India. (Elwin 1961: 60)

This was the same tact that Nehru used with the leaders of southIndia when they demanded separate states and later threatened secession(in what was branded the Dravidian Movement) due to Hindi beingmade the official language. The demand to create states along linguisticlines first led to the creation of Andhra in 1953 (and renamed AndhraPradesh in 1956). With Andhra’s Telugu speakers having won their state,other regions also began demanding statehood. This led to the StatesReorganization Act of 1956, which created a number of states along eth-nolinguistic lines. Nehru and the Indian elite were initially averse to cre-ating such states, believing it could lead to India’s balkanization, but bygiving into the popular will of the masses, these states “consolidated theunity of India” (Guha 2007b: 189, 199–200). Since then, new states havebeen periodically created along regional lines (but never on religious

Introducing India 9

grounds), with Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Jharkhand being madestates in 2000 and Telangana in 2014 (see Table 1.1). The state-creationprocess and their ethnic composition have played no small role in ensur-ing India’s relative stability as a federal setup (Adeney 2007).

It is a testament to Indian democracy that it remains one of the fewcountries (another being Nigeria) that can continue to add to its list ofstates (Tillin 2012). Given extant demands, one should not be at all sur-prised if the India of the future included states called Vidarbha, Gorkha-land, Harit Pradesh, Bhojpur, Mahakaushal, Poorvanchal, Bodoland,Marathwada, Rayalaseema, Bundelkhand, Seemanchal, Avadh, andKongu Nadu. One author has even suggested that India should bedivided into fifty or sixty states (Kashyap 1998). While this may soundexcessive, it is useful to consider that the United States, as currentlyconstituted, with about 325 million people, has fifty states, while India,with four times as many people, has just twenty-eight states. Forinstance, Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, has nearly 205 million peo-ple (which is over 60 percent of the US population), and is bound to bereorganized in the future.

The manner in which Nehru and others dealt with Hindi becomingthe national language also speaks to these early leaders’ accommodativespirit. The Indian constitution, which was adopted in November 1949and became operational in January 1950, said that Hindi would becomethe national language within fifteen years, until which time Englishcould also be used for all official purposes. As the date approached toimplement Hindi as the sole national language, southerners especiallyturned hostile. In 1963, India under Nehru passed the Official LanguagesAct, which said English may continue to be used for official communi-cation even after 1965. When debates over verbiage led to the act notbeing implemented, violent protests erupted in Tamil Nadu, leading torioting and self-immolation. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who became primeminister following Nehru’s death in May 1964, soon thereafter declaredthat states will be allowed to maintain their regional languages and alsocontinue to use English as an official language when communicatingwith each other and the central government.

This thus far continues to be the case in India, where the sense ofbeing Indian is not associated with any particular language. Indeed, thepopularity of Hindi and English has grown to the point where both lan-guages now are spoken interchangeably, leading to a fusion called“Hinglish.” Indian authors today are among the best writers in English,and their literary success has led some to claim that the “empire is strik-ing back.” At the same time, nearly 40 percent of Indians now speak

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Introducing India 11

Hindi, and Bollywood no doubt has played a major role in facilitatingthis. Even regions that rebelled against Hindi being imposed are nowgradually accepting it, and this would not have happened if the Indiangovernment had refused to compromise on the language issue andsought to impose Hindi on the entire population. Like Nehru, who wasaverse to creating linguistic states but relented in order to ensure India’sterritorial integrity, Prime Minister Shastri was averse to continuingwith English as an official language (Guha 2007b: 395). But he toogave in to the popular will of the south, and polyglot India is, conse-quently, a culturally richer country. And thanks to such accommodation,it is also one where “loyalty first and foremost to the regions is insteady decline” (Mitra and Pehl 2010: 53). The rise of Hindu national-ists, under Narendra Modi, who want to superimpose Hindi on the restof India and institute policies that will empower the north over the southof the country will test these gains in the years ahead.

Nehru’s predilection for accommodation as opposed to confronta-tion extended to the region as well, and this was especially so in hisdealings with China—which arguably took advantage of Nehru’s cama-raderie and humiliated the prime minister—and smaller states like SriLanka, which had attracted a large number of Indian laborers whoseplight Nehru took a deep interest in.

Nehru and his sister Krishna Hutheesinghwith A. Vittal Pai (agent to thegovernment of India) and his wife, TaraPai, Sri Lanka, July 1939. Photo courtesyof Sharada Nayak.

Accommodating SeparatistsIndia has experienced dozens of separatist attempts since independence.While the northeastern area that comprises seven states has undergone themost numerous and longest-lasting secessionist attempts, the movement byextremist Sikhs in the Punjab and Kashmiri separatism have generated themost coverage. The quest to create a state of Khalistan for Sikhs endedviolently when Indira Gandhi sent the Indian army into the Golden Tem-ple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, to force out insurgents hiding within its com-pound. Operation Blue Star culminated in her Sikh bodyguards assassinat-ing her in October 1984, which in turn unleashed murderous riots againstSikhs (Tully and Satish 1985). There remain elements within Punjab whoglorify pro-Khalistan leaders and clamor for a separate state for Sikhs, butPunjab, in the main, now operates as a solid unit of the Indian union.

Kashmiri secessionism, on the other hand, is complicated by theIndia-Pakistan rivalry and attendant communalism (Chowdhary 2016).When the Hindu ruler of Kashmir decided to join India, Nehru assuredhis predominantly Muslim population that they would be treated asequal citizens even as India and Pakistan battled over Kashmir. In anattempt to buy their loyalty, Kashmir was provided certain privilegesthat did not apply to other states (i.e., its own constitution and flag, andthe provision that only Kashmiris could purchase land in Kashmir). Thiswas in line with India’s asymmetrical federalism, whereby some statesare afforded certain rights so as to ensure their adoptability within theIndian union. Such accommodation did not prevent tensions betweenthe state and center over numerous issues, but when (just as in the Pun-jab) Indira Gandhi, and thereafter her son Rajiv Gandhi, resorted toelectoral meddling in the state in the 1980s, it contributed to the Kash-mir insurgency (Ganguly 1997; Bose 2003). Pakistan-sponsored terroristactivities and Indian troops’ violence with impunity caused much car-nage in Jammu and Kashmir (DeVotta 2012: 35; Tankel 2013). TheModi government’s policies—splitting the state into two territories,enforcing a lengthy communications blockade that prevented Kashmirisfrom accessing the internet and using phones, and keeping Kashmiripoliticians under house arrest while promoting Hindu nationalism—havefurther exacerbated tensions in the region.

Since the late 1960s, India has also experienced an insurgencymovement that has sought to overthrow the state. This so-called Nax-alite Movement (which gets its name from a 1967 revolt in the villageof Naxalbari) is influenced by Maoism, although it is linked to long-standing communist party activism in India (Joshi and Josh 2011). Inthe past few years, nearly 200 of India’s over 600 districts have dealt

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with Naxalite violence. In most instances recently, the violence stemsfrom attempts to uproot tribal people especially from their land (sostates and private companies can extract various natural resources), thescarcity of government services and employment among rural youth,and the impunity with which police and paramilitary forces perpetrateviolence against India’s most marginalized populations (Guha 2007a;Miklian and Carney 2010; Sundar 2016). Naxalite violence is not sepa-ratist, because the Naxalites seek to take over the state.

Successive Indian governments have adopted a carrot-and-stickapproach when dealing with forces threatening to undermine the Indianunion. In the latter instance, the Indian state has resorted to brute vio-lence to put down separatist forces, and its tactics have rightly gener-ated condemnation both within and without India. But if India todayfunctions as a stronger state with Indians taking pride in their national-ity even as they celebrate their regional diversity, it is due to the mainlyaccommodative spirit that India’s postindependence leaders promoted.

Democratic Vibrancy and BackslidingThere were dozens of countries in Africa and Asia that gained independ-ence in the two decades following World War II, yet India is among thefew that successfully nurtured and maintained its democracy eventhough it was considered among the most likely to fail. Why is this so?Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (2005) has argued that Indian civilizationhas long tolerated, encouraged, and celebrated an argumentative tradi-tion that has been conducive to democracy and secularism.

Others suggest that there is nothing inherently democratic aboutIndia’s past, and that the consolidation of democracy is mainly due tothe conscious decisions made by Indian leaders like Jawaharlal Nehruwho championed the idea of representative government for all citizens(Khilnani 1997). There is no gainsaying how important Nehru espe-cially was in ensuring India adopted a democratic trajectory. Not onlydid he serve three full terms as prime minister, but among his firstresponsibilities was helping to forge the Indian constitution, which onescholar thinks may represent “the greatest political venture since thatoriginated in Philadelphia in 1787” (Austin 1999: 308). This is becausethe world’s longest written constitution, which Nehru together withDalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar and others engineered, has taught Indi-ans how to operate within a democracy (Khosla 2020).

There was also a practical reason for democratic consolidation inIndia, and it concerns India’s ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional


diversity: people strongly identify with their regional identities. In thiscontext, authoritarian governance was bound to lead to secessionistpressures, while devolution of power to local regions as part of a federalpolitical structure was more likely to maintain unity and territorialintegrity. This meant granting everyone in the polity the right to vote (asopposed to countries like the United States and United Kingdom wherethe franchise was introduced gradually) even if the state lacked thecapacity to accommodate people’s basic needs (Ramanathan andRamanathan 2017). If India has chugged along and defied the odds ofdisintegration that some believed likely (Harrison 1960), it is in nosmall measure due to this devolutionary culture.

Political scientists consider a democracy to be consolidated if allstakeholders therein are committed to changing governments throughfree and fair elections. From this standpoint, India is a consolidateddemocracy. Except for a two-year period between 1975 and 1977 whenIndira Gandhi imposed emergency rule, the country has changed gov-ernments via the franchise. Indeed, elections in India are akin to carni-valesque celebrations, and the Indian word tamasha (which the OxfordEnglish Dictionary now defines as “an entertainment, show, display,public function” and “a fuss, a commotion”) best captures the accompa-nying spirit and milieu of political campaigning. The closest compara-ble atmosphere in the United States is the tailgating revelry that takesplace prior to football games. Depending on their wherewithal, candi-dates aspiring to political office campaign using aircrafts, helicopters,trains, tractors, automobiles, bullock carts, elephants, and camels.

But a country could be democratically consolidated yet operate inilliberal fashion. Being a liberal democracy requires a country to gobeyond merely holding free and fair elections. It must also uphold civilliberties for all citizens irrespective of ethnicity and religion, ensure anindependent judiciary that fearlessly enforces the rule of law, tolerate civilsociety, minimize corruption, and balance against executive overreach(Diamond 2019: 19). Becoming and maintaining a liberal democracy is aconstant work in progress, and this is evidenced by how even establisheddemocracies like those in Western Europe and that of the United Stateshave experienced backsliding due to recent right-wing populist move-ments. Indeed, the backsliding that has taken place in the United Statesis sufficiently severe that some scholars wonder if democracy as we knowit is being threatened (Mickey, Levitsky, and Way 2017).

The pro-Hindu politics of the BJP have long worried those who arecommitted to seeing India being a pluralist and secular country. Theparty, however, had governed relatively moderately when it headed the

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government from 1998 to 2004. This was partly due to its then leaderAtal Bihari Vajpayee but also due to it being part of a coalition. Whenthe party won a clear majority in 2014 and Narendra Modi becameprime minister, many felt that notwithstanding Modi’s anti-Muslim his-tory he too would be pushed to govern moderately. Ashutosh Varshney(2014), a leading scholar of India, noted that the need to develop Indiaeconomically and appeal to moderate voters, constitutional constraints,and the country’s first-past-the-post electoral system, among other issues,would nudge Modi and the BJP to tone down their Hindu nationalistagenda. Varshney had echoed others before Modi became prime minis-ter, saying: “No political party [in India] can come to power withoutputting together multi-religious, multi-caste, multilingual coalitions.Barring entirely unpredictable shocks to the system, a rightwing takeoverof Indian politics is inconceivable” (2013: 131). And just before Modi’sreelection, another knowledgeable authority on India’s political econ-omy likewise pointed to the country’s varied regional and local dynam-ics and caste politics and argued that the BJP’s goal to create a staterooted in Hindu nationalism will “remain aspirational, as India’s com-plex ecosystem of identities will continue to act as a powerful break ona descent into outright ethnonationalism” (Sharma 2019: 106). Yet fol-lowing the anti-Muslim agenda that was instituted within six months ofModi’s May 2019 reelection, it is clear the country is becoming increas-ingly illiberal (Ganguly 2020). Within the context of democratic consol-idation, it is now an electorally vibrant polity that is mired in illiberalmajoritarianism (Varshney 2019). Hindutva is the ideology undergirdingthis majoritarianism.

HindutvaIndia’s success in defying the odds and staying democratic causeddemocracy scholar Robert Dahl to say that “democracy . . . is thenational ideology of India” (1998: 162). But the ramping up of Islamo-phobia and majoritarian politics, especially since Narendra Modibecame prime minister in 2014, allows one to argue that it is Hindutvathat is now the national ideology of India.

Hindutva refers to “Hindu-ness” and is the ideology associated withthe Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Orga-nization). Its principal originator, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, associ-ated Hindutva with “Hindu blood,” the Sanskrit language, and itsattendant culture. While the term Hindutva can connote differentmeanings (Andersen and Damle 2018: 77), it generally holds that no


matter an Indian’s religion, she or he should subscribe to a Hinduethos (Hardgrave 2005).

Hindutvadis may claim their ideology seeks to protect and promoteHindu culture and is not hostile toward non-Hindus, but the Hindu dom-ination they subscribe to threatens minority rights, and the Islamopho-bia they wallow in similarly threatens the country’s nearly 200 millionMuslims. This sense of majoritarianism stems from the notion that Hin-duism is the subcontinent’s oldest religion and India is its home; whileall Indians may consider the country their pitribhu (fatherland), onlyHindus—plus groups like Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs whose religionsoriginated in India—possess it as a punyabhu (holy land) (Savarkar2003: 115–116). Minorities must thus appreciate their subordinate posi-tion and not make undue demands on the majority, who are the authen-tic bhumiputra (sons of the soil).

The RSS was organized in 1925 with the goal of uniting and strength-ening a divided Hindu community, although its rhetoric from the begin-ning was majoritarian and Islamophobic. The RSS incorporates nearlyforty other pro-Hindu affiliates—with the BJP operating as its politicalwing—and seeks to create an India that is contrary to the secular countryGandhi and Nehru aspired toward. Indeed, it was a member of the RSSwho killed Gandhi because he, like fellow Hindu extremists, believed theMahatma appeased Muslims and the newly created Pakistan. Among Hin-dutva advocates, Gandhi’s murderer is today hailed as a “patriot” (Kazmin2019: 8). This is especially ironic given that the RSS played no opposi-tional role in India’s quest for independence from the British.

While the RSS and its political affiliate the BJP have sometimesexperienced tensions between them, the rise of Narendra Modi helpedminimize differences. Modi was a pracharak (a full-time RSS volun-teer) before being allowed to enter politics in the state of Gujarat.Postindependence India had experienced episodic Hindu-Muslim rioting(Berenschot 2011; Brass 2003), but soon after his election as Gujaratchief minister the state erupted in the worst anti-Muslim violence sincePartition (Sarkar 2002). This caused Modi to be shunned by the interna-tional community (with the United States refusing to grant him a visafor a number of years), but his pro-Hindu credentials, coupled withGujarat’s relatively vibrant economy, made him all the more popularamong Hindutva advocates.

The influence of the RSS now reaches to the far corners of India, andwhen Modi headed the BJP ticket in 2014, the organization’s cadre cam-paigned on his behalf in ways they had not done for other BJP candidates.They did so again in 2019, even as the Indian diaspora and industrialistsonce more funneled vast amounts of money toward the BJP campaign and

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most media provided uncritical coverage. The lackluster leadership of theCongress Party was a major reason for BJP dominance (Hasan 2018), butthe so-called three Ms—money, machine, and media—made stymyingModi’s reelection prospects a formidable task (Jenkins 2019).

Modi’s election and reelection as prime minister emboldened Hin-dutvadis determined to create a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu polity) thatstands in opposition to the secular ideals upon which India’s democracyhas been built (Aiyar 2004; Bhargava 1998). They have long accusedthe Congress Party of mollycoddling minorities (especially Muslims)and have expressed their detestation for the party’s secular claims byroutinely spelling the word as “sickular.” Congress Party leaders haveoccasionally pandered to pro-Hindu sentiments, a development somecall “soft-Hindutva,” but the party has consistently stood in oppositionto violence against Muslims. Such violence and marginalization ofMuslims, however, is a major manifestation of Hindutvadis’ contemptfor India’s secular republic.

Since Modi’s rise to national power, Muslims (and some Dalits too)have been assaulted and killed for eating beef even as they are accusedof resorting to “love jihad” (a conspiracy to seduce Hindu girls and con-vert them to Islam) and “population jihad” (an attempt to overtake Hin-dus, who are nearly 80 percent of the population as per the 2011 census).This is despite evidence that fertility rates for both Hindus and Muslimsare related to educational and economic circumstances (Jeffery and Jef-fery 2006) and population growth is declining faster among Muslims(“Poison of Demographic Prejudice” 2015: 7). The anti-Muslim violenceand agitprop coincide with attempts to convert non-Hindus to Hinduism(Gupta 2018) even as it appears to be part of a calibrated attempt toeventually disenfranchise Muslims by branding them noncitizens (dis-cussed further in Chapter 11).

Following Partition, most prominent and accomplished Muslimsmigrated to Pakistan. Most among those who decided to stay in Indiawere extremely poor, and according to the 2006 Rajindar Sachar Com-mittee report, India’s Muslims lag behind other communities when itcomes to government employment, access to health facilities and bankcredit, education, and their overall economic condition (Prime Minis-ter’s High Level Committee 2006). Demonizing an already downtrod-den population is a sure way to radicalize them, and in a region whereIslamic fundamentalism is in sway and Islamic terror groups are look-ing to attack India, it is akin to playing with fire.

Muslim incursion into South Asia starting in the eighth century, Muslim-Mughal influence that led to Hindus converting to Islam, and vio-lence associated with Partition all combine to promote the Islamophobia


undergirding Hindutva ideology. The inability to reconcile with the sub-continent’s Islamic legacy and the subsequent British presence is whatcauses Prime Minister Modi and other Hindutvadis to talk about 1,000years of slavery.

This sense of humiliation has led to ridiculous claims designed toportray Hinduism as part of a civilization par excellence. For instance,Hindutvadis assert that the Taj Mahal is not a Mughal creation but wasoriginally a Hindu temple built by a Hindu king in honor of Shiva andthat prayers to Lord Shiva should therefore be allowed on its premises;and that cars, plastic surgery, in vitro fertilization, stem cells, and air-planes (traveling between planets around 7000 B.C.E.) were all inventedin ancient India. Recently a BJP member of parliament claimed that“speaking in Sanskrit every day boosts the nervous system and keepsdiabetics and cholesterol at bay” (quoted in “Ganesh Singh’s Statementin Parliament” 2019: 11).

This attempt to reconstruct and rewrite history in ways that burnisheverything related to Hinduism is a long-standing Hindutva goal that isnow well under way. Consequently, new textbooks vilify non-Hinduelements throughout Indian history and disregard the labors of Jawahar-lal Nehru and Congress Party leaders while magnifying the roles ofHindu heroes and nationalists (Traub 2018). Other Hindutva objectivesinclude banning cow slaughter (which is illegal in a number of states)throughout India, banning Hindus from converting to other religions,and instituting a uniform civil code (which will end the special rightsespecially Muslims enjoy when it comes to marriage, divorce, andinheritance). Two other long-standing goals, repealing Article 370 of theconstitution and building a temple for Lord Ram in Ayodhya (locatedwithin the state of Uttar Pradesh), have now come to fruition.

The temple dispute is based on a dubious claim that the mosquehonoring the first Mughal emperor, Babur, was constructed on the spotwhere the Hindu god Lord Ram was born. While the god Ram is a cele-brated and venerated figure, there is no evidence that he was born in Ayo-dhya or anywhere else. But the dispute led to a Hindu mob demolishingthe early-sixteenth-century mosque in 1992 as part of a well-orchestratedRSS campaign (Kaw 2010: 56). In November 2019, in a victory for Hinduextremists, the Indian Supreme Court finally gifted the disputed site wherethe mosque stood to Hindu entities, and in August 2020 the prime ministerceremoniously laid the foundation stone to build a grand temple to LordRam. One can expect the temple to be completed before the next generalelections, so that Modi and the BJP can benefit from it politically.

Article 370, on the other hand, took effect in 1949 and allowed theonly majority-Muslim state, of Jammu and Kashmir, to design its own

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laws except on issues pertaining to foreign affairs, defense, and finance.In the process, it granted the state the right to its own constitution andflag, which other Indian states are not entitled to. Together with a sub-sequent addition (Article 35A), the state legislature was empowered todetermine who qualified to be a permanent resident and own property inthe region. This prevented non-Kashmiris from owning land and obtain-ing state scholarships and government jobs. As noted earlier, the policieswere designed to accommodate predominantly Muslim Kashmiris withinthe Indian union when Pakistan claimed all of Kashmir. But the residen-tial restrictions have long galled Hindu extremists, who would like tosettle Hindus in the region and thereby transform its demographics. InAugust 2019, Prime Minister Modi’s government annulled the statehoodof Jammu and Kashmir and created two union territories that are directlygoverned from New Delhi. This is another victory for Hindu suprema-cists, for they can now gradually transform the region’s demographics byflooding the area with Hindu settlers. These recent developments ques-tion the extent to which India will function within a secular ethos.

In 2001, a decade after India began gradually opening up its econ-omy, an influential US scholar wondered if “India is destined always tobe ‘emerging’ but never actually arriving” (Cohen 2001: 2). Twodecades later, with India being the fifth largest economy in the worldand expanding military ties to the United States, one may argue that thecountry has indeed “arrived” and will play a leading role in the twenty-first century. But India’s ability to be a consequential and even indis-pensable player on the global stage will depend on internal cohesion.That in turn mandates camaraderie, especially between its Hindus andMuslims, which is more likely to be achieved in a pluralist and secular,as opposed to majoritarian Hindu, India.

The Chapters AheadThe chapters that follow, by prominent scholars of India, seek to provideespecially undergraduates an overarching understanding of the country.They provide context while emphasizing the most important aspects ofthe topic that is covered. Thus Chapter 2, by Douglas Hill, not only mapsIndia’s geographical features but also discusses how people’s socioeco-nomic, political, and environmental lives are shaped by them. There aremany Indias and Hill highlights how India’s variegated geographies arelinked to livelihoods, for “the outcome of economic, political, or socialprocesses depends on where it occurs; whether it is in a town in the fer-tile Gangetic areas, a small village in the middle hills of the Himalayas,or a prosperous neighborhood of a bustling megacity.”


Chapter 3, by Benjamin Cohen, provides an overview of India andSouth Asia’s major historical periods, events, and some themes from theIndus Valley era (c. 2500 B.C.E.) to India’s independence in 1947. Nei-ther settled nor fixed, India’s history is constantly being added to, chal-lenged, and revised as new discoveries are made and new theoreticalinsights are applied to its lengthy past. The chapter divides India’s pastinto a more nuanced scheme rather than the traditional tripartite ancient,medieval, and modern periods. Cohen brings to the fore the majordynasties and empires that have held sway over the subcontinent whilealluding to some of the scholarly debates that have intervened in theirnarratives. Although far from comprehensive, this chapter provides abroad introduction and contextualization for modern India’s history.

In Chapter 4, Eswaran Sridharan explains the resilience of democracyin India in the face of a low-income economy, widespread poverty, andimmense religious and ethnic diversity; how the country’s federal systemis structured; and how political parties have evolved and their leaders haveoperated over the decades within the system. Sridharan discusses ArendLijphart’s notion of consociationalism (sharing power within democracy)to explain India’s ability to function as a relatively stable polity. He alsopoints to the country’s sense of unity in diversity as another major reasonfor such stability. The latter, as noted earlier, is now being challenged dueto Hindutva advocates feeling emboldened, and the dangers this poses forthe country are discussed briefly in the final chapter.

Chapter 5, by Rahul Mukherji and Seyed Hossein Zarhani, discussIndia’s socialist economy and why and how the country embraced glob-alization and private entrepreneurship. In doing so, they point to a num-ber of policies the Indian state has adopted in order to try to alleviatepoverty. But they emphasize that, unlike in certain other states thatdeveloped in dramatic fashion, Indian leaders typically come to majordecisions gradually. In short, extant policies get jettisoned only afteralternative options tried incrementally prove more useful. When thishappens amid a degree of institutional consensus, a tipping point isreached, upon which new policies become embedded. According toMukherji and Zarhani, the successful transformative changes that takeplace economically in India are not based on the whim of a prime min-ister; they result after issues have been debated over time.

Chapter 6, by Sumit Ganguly, evaluates the key drivers that haveinfluenced the country’s external relations since it gained independence.Ganguly discusses specific events that conditioned India’s foreign pol-icy posture, the institutional sources that have influenced its foreignpolicy trajectories, and certain challenges it faces in the twenty-first

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century. In doing so, he emphasizes how the Indian independencemovement and beliefs and practices of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehruimpacted the country’s postindependence foreign policy trajectory.China’s rise and expanding tentacles in South Asia challenge India’sinfluence in the Indo-Pacific. While the country participates in militaryexercise with the United States, Japan, and Australia to ensure its con-tinued influence in the region, Ganguly suggests India may need to jointhe United States in a strategic partnership to balance meaningfullyagainst a dominant China.

Chapter 7, by Christophe Jaffrelot, discusses the origins of the castesystem and how both Dalits and the Other Backward Classes have usedtheir numbers and the franchise to gradually organize, mobilize, andassert themselves in Indian politics. Jaffrelot discusses how Kanshi Ramgave rise to the Bahujan Samaj Party and the party’s progress andimpact on Indian politics (especially in Uttar Pradesh) over the past fewelections. Caste was most salient when the jajmani system (which spec-ified services across caste groups) operated and perpetuated hereditarycaste-based employment. But that is less and less the case today. As Jaf-frelot notes, caste still exists and is especially important when it comesto marriage, but the caste system is undergoing significant change, atleast in urban areas.

Chapter 8, by Chad Bauman and Ainslie Embree, highlights howmany religious systems have contributed to the complex mosaic of con-temporary Indian life. Four of them—Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism,and Sikhism—originated in South Asia and constitute over 80 percentof India’s population. Three had their origins outside the subcontinent—Islam (by far the largest), Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. Bauman andEmbree offer brief surveys of the historical development of these reli-gions in India and emphasize their interaction with each other and theircontributions to the larger society. These interactions have unfortunatelybeen characterized by hostility, especially before and after Partition in1947 and by the development of political parties stressing the domi-nance of Hindu culture over the religious groups that had their originsoutside the subcontinent.

In Chapter 9, Lisa Trivedi looks at Indian women and identifies someof the common pitfalls in our thinking about women in modern Indiaeven as she introduces the turning points in the emergence of women ashistorical subjects and actors. Beginning with a discussion of the commonmisconceptions and paradoxes of women’s position in contemporaryIndian society, Trivedi explains how colonialism, nationalism, and thefamily have contributed to the particular political, social, and economic


positions in which women live today. Her chapter also explores the rolesof Indian women themselves in transforming society and their positionwithin it over the course of more than a century. Finally, the chapter con-siders women’s position in society in terms of education, politics, andwork in the period following independence. New opportunities in thework force made possible by India’s liberalized and growing economy aretoday challenging social roles and customs that have heretofore been thesingle most important influence on women’s lives in India. Just howmuch women’s social status will be changed by women themselves andhow much it will change due to forces brought to bear upon society bythe economy are questions for the century ahead.

Poverty, development, and urbanization have degraded India’s air,land, and water to the point where it is today one of the most pollutedcounties. Indeed, fourteen of the world’s fifteen most polluted cities are inIndia (“Dirty Work” 2018: 14). And this despite the country’s constitutionenjoining citizens to protect the environment. Chapter 10, on population,urbanization, and the environment, by Kelly Alley, discusses how ecolog-ical, hydrological, and planetary cycles impact Indian livelihoods andhow India’s National Green Tribunal and judiciary have dealt with chal-lenges stemming from urbanization, environmental strains, and publichealth. Alley’s chapter points to how citizen and judicial activism oper-ate as a check on government even as certain authorities may seek to putdevelopment ahead of environmental well-being. The chapter also dis-cusses how Indians at multiple levels are seeking to deal with environ-mental challenges in purposive and consequential ways.

Finally, Chapter 11 looks ahead to the challenges facing India.These challenges include the assault on democracy by Hindu nationalistforces. They certainly include Covid-19 and the way the coronavirushas exacerbated the difficulties facing the country economically.

At the end of World War II, no serious student of internationalaffairs could afford to ignore the United States. Similarly, no seriousstudent of international affairs today can afford to ignore India, for itsactions too will increasingly affect the rest of the world for better orworse. The chapters that follow go a long way in helping students bet-ter comprehend the extraordinary and complex country that is India.

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understanding contemporary india

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